117. Nader Shah: The Sword of Persia
Nader Shah was not born to rule. He was poor, the son of a shepherd in a semi-nomadic tribe, and had no connection to the throne. But he was physically impressive; he stood over six feet tall, had dar...
25 Jan 202455min
116. Isfahan: The City of Dreams
Isfahan, half of the world. It had been a city for years, but at the end of the 16th century Shah Abbas made it his capital and totally transformed it. With the immense wealth he brought to the city, ...
23 Jan 202452min
115. The Great Conversion: How Iran became Shia
How did the great divide within Islam, the split between Sunni and Shia, develop? We trace how the great 16th century confrontation between the Ottomans of Turkey and the Safavids of Iran cemented wha...
18 Jan 202453min
114. The Persian Renaissance
After conquering much of Eurasia, Timur showed no interest in building institutions and so after his death, like the Mongol Empire before it, the Timurid Empire soon fragmented and collapsed. However,...
16 Jan 202444min
113. Timur: Scourge of God
Timur, known to many as Tamburlaine the Great from the iconic Marlowe play. Despite having a limp and struggling to get onto a horse, he erupted from what is now Uzbekistan at the head of a mounted ar...
11 Jan 202442min
112. Ferdowsi: How One Poet Saved Persian Civilisation
After the Arab conquest, Persia was turned upside down. Patronage went to Islam as opposed to Zoroastrianism. The official language of state was now Arabic. Even the very nature of the state changed; ...
9 Jan 202456min
111. Shackleton: The Hero of Antarctica
As the timber creaked under the pressure of the Antarctic ice, Shackleton knew his voyage aboard the Endurance was doomed. What the ice gets, the ice keeps. And so followed one of the most obscenely d...
4 Jan 202438min
110. Antarctica: The Continent that wouldn’t be Conquered
Antarctica, the great land of ice. It was first spotted in the early years of the 19th century but it wasn't until 1895 that humans, in the form of a Norwegian expedition, actually landed on one of th...
2 Jan 202443min
